JEFF VRABEL: Trouble in the food group 'chocotastic'

Jeff Vrabel

Tuesday

May 22, 2007 at 12:01 AMMay 22, 2007 at 10:11 PM

Having just turned down the administration’s request to appoint me War Czar — listen, the time’s just not right for me — I’d like to turn my attention to something just as pressing yet considerably more fattening: counterfeit chocolate.

Having just turned down the administration’s request to appoint me War Czar — listen, the time’s just not right for me — I’d like to turn my attention to something just as pressing yet considerably more fattening: counterfeit chocolate.

It turns out that chocolate, like American values, the children, Christmas, and The Much Better Way That Things Used to be in the ‘50s, is under attack by hippies, liberals, the government and activist judges. At least it is according to the actual Web site Don’tMessWithOurChocolate.com, which demands that YOUR VOICE NEEDS TO BE HEARD, TO HELP SAVE CHOCOLATE AS CHOCOLATE! So, for the love of Pete, raise your voice! Uh, when you’re done chewing, that is, we don’t want brown 100 Grand spittle all over the place in here, I just cleaned the rug.

Here’s the problem: International cabal Big Chocolate is pushing for the FDA to approve change in the basic formula of chocolate, “by allowing the use of vegetable fat substitutes in place of cocoa butter.” So, basically, things would be called chocolate that would have no cocoa butter in them, which is highly misleading, much like labeling a shapeless glop of meat-ish substance a Whopper Jr. (It gets worse, too. Big Chocolate wants to replace almonds with Superballs, and start including in their recipes bits of ground-up kittens. I’m kidding, I’m kidding! Ground-up kittens would totally ruin the texture, as well as leave fur all over the place.)

I am joking, but this site is not. “Through the years, consumers have had a passionate love affair with chocolate,” reads the Welcome note, written, ostensibly, by someone who has probably not actually had many passionate love affairs. “Chocolate is an indulgence that everyone can afford, and it provides comfort, pleasure and happiness.”

This part is true; one of my little luxuries is snuggling up every night under a warm chocolate quilt; going to bed is like smearing myself with restfulness.

So what the site and chocoholics around the world purport to do, once they clean their mouths up, is demand, via an online grass-roots movement, that the FDA deny Big Chocolate the ability to fudge its recipe. Yeah, yeah. I don’t feel good about puns like that, you know.

That said, the proprietors behind Don’tMessWithOurChocolate.com, in the interest of fostering an “open an honest dialogue” and because they’re smart-sounding hippies with no real convictions, have furnished an equal-time response by the CMA (Chocolate Manufacturers Association, as well as the Country Music Association, and I’d bet people go to the wrong seminars there all the time), which reads in part: “The Chocolate Manufacturers Association has not advocated on behalf of any specific change to the standards of identity for chocolate.” So, yeah! And, uh, what was everyone fighting about again? And why am I singing the Oompa-Loompa song in my head?

The response by the CMA, which includes Nestle, Hershey, Archer Daniels Midland and Willy Wonka, goes on to say, in highly bold type, that “Any update to the standards of identity for chocolate will take years — not days, months or weeks — to review ... FDA approval of a standard of identity for white chocolate took 10 years.” So the next time you hear someone whining that the federal response to Katrina came tragically late, you just tell them, pfft, you just count your blessings, champ, it’s not like you were waiting to get an update to the standards of identity in chocolate. Also, the CMA says that if the FDA elects to change the standards, “a company could continue making choocolate as they always have.” My point being, this doesn’t seem like a debate with a pressing time element to it. So let’s all just sit down and relax with a nice, tall glass of refreshing vegetable oil.